Hussman Weekly Market Comment: The Future is Now

Link to: The Future is Now

While the evidence may be alarming to some, make no mistake: The median price/revenue multiple for S&P 500 constituents is now significantly higher than at the 2000 market peak. The average price/revenue multiple across S&P 500 constituents is now above every point in that bubble except the first and third quarters of 2000. Only the capitalization-weighted price/revenue multiple – presently at about 1.7 – is materially below the price/revenue multiple of 2.2 reached at the 2000 peak. That’s largely because S&P 500 market capitalization was dominated by high price/revenue technology stocks in 2000. [Geek's Note: as a result, if one chooses a universe of stocks by first sorting by market capitalization, one will probably find that price/revenue multiples of those stocks are lower today than in 2000]. Regardless, the historical norm for the capitalization-weighted S&P 500 price/revenue ratio is only about 0.80, less than half of present levels. The fact is that unless current record-high profit margins turn out to be permanent, against all historical experience to the contrary, the overvaluation of the broad equity market is equal or more extreme today than it was at the 2000 bubble peak.

Investors often forget that smaller stocks struggled during the final years of the bubble as investors clamored for glamour. Again, the broad stock market was much more reasonably valued in 2000 than it is today, as extreme valuations were skewed among the largest of the large caps. Not anymore. The Federal Reserve has stomped on the gas pedal for years, inadvertently taking price/earnings ratios at face value, while attending to “equity risk premium” models that have a demonstrably poor relationship with subsequent returns. As a result, the Fed has produced what is now the most generalized equity valuation bubble that investors are likely to observe in their lifetimes.